The economy added 88,000 jobs in March, far below economists’ expectations, and the unemployment rate ticked down to 7.6%. Experts are still digesting today’s report, but here are five quick takeaways.

Grim news all around. There’s no way to sugar-coat it: This was a lousy report. In recent months, the main focus has been on whether payrolls could grow by 200,000 per month. In March, they didn’t even manage 100,000. The details are just as bad: The number of people actually working (based on a separate data set than the payroll figures) actually fell by 206,000, and the unemployment rate only fell because nearly half a million Americans dropped out of the labor force altogether. Just about the only positive news: The government revised up its estimates for January and February by a combined 61,000.

Trend heading in the wrong direction. Economists caution against reading too much into any one report, especially the preliminary figures, which are routinely revised. Still, the longer-run trends aren’t terribly encouraging. Employers have added an average of 168,000 jobs per month over the past three months, the worst mark since October. A year ago, the economy was adding jobs at a pace of 2.4 million per year; now that mark is down to below 2 million, a sign that job growth is slowing rather than accelerating.

Forward-looking indicators more mixed. Today’s report contains some glimmers of hope for the months ahead, but they’re far from definitive. Employers added 20,000 temporary workers in March, which can be an early sign of future hiring — though it can also mean companies are reluctant to hire permanent staffers. Full-time employment grew after falling last month, and both overtime and the average number of hours worked ticked up slightly. But wages were mostly flat, suggesting employers aren’t boosting pay to attract workers.

Housing rebound continues. The construction sector added 18,000 jobs in March, and 162,000 over the past year. Other sectors were a mixed bag. Restaurants and bars added jobs, but retailers cut them. Manufacturing employment was down slightly. The government cut jobs too, but more slowly than in recent months — and in an unexpected twist, the Labor Department now says the public sector actually added 14,000 jobs in February, the first increase since September.

Tough road for the unemployed. The focus on month-to-month changes sometimes obscures the bigger picture: This remains a brutally challenging job market. The number of unemployed workers actually dropped below 12 million in March for the first time since the recession, but mostly because for the 35th consecutive month, more unemployed workers left the labor force than found jobs. 4.6 million Americans have been out of work for more than six months, and the average job seeker has been out of work for more than eight and a half months — a figure that now seems to be trending upward. Meanwhile, the U.S. still has 2.8 million fewer jobs than when the recession began.

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